


Swords and Stones

by thisbluespirit



Category: Blake's 7, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Bad Cooking, Community: genprompt_bingo, Community: hc_bingo, Computer death, Crossover, Explosions, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Death, Minor Injuries, Nightmares, Post-Canon, Post-Gauda Prime, Post-Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Tatooine (Star Wars), Weapons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:21:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23576839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisbluespirit/pseuds/thisbluespirit
Summary: Dayna runs from Gauda Prime as far and as fast as she can, and finds herself in a very different galaxy…
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Dayna Mellanby
Comments: 8
Kudos: 8
Collections: Genprompt Bingo Round 17, Hurt/Comfort Bingo - Round 10





	Swords and Stones

**Author's Note:**

> Written for hc_bingo's Round 10 April Amnesty (Crossover) Challenge, using the prompts "Loss of identity," "Hostile Climate," and "Culture Shock". Also for the genprompt_bingo square "The company of strangers."

Dayna dodged past a market stall and into a side alley between a row of low buildings, hoping she’d lost her pursuers – a bunch of solders in white armour who seemed distinctly unfriendly. She pressed herself back against the rough stone wall, holding her breath as they ran past her hiding place. 

When she’d asked Orac to send her as far away from Gauda Prime as possible, she should have realised it was a terrible idea. Orac’s range of what counted as possible was pretty weird on good days and it had not been a good day. There had been no good days for a long time. Besides, it was a computer. It tended to be dangerously literal. 

Orac had directed her flight path right through some kind of anomaly, and she’d come out here with her small ship in a mess from traversing something that she was pretty sure shouldn’t be traversed by human beings, and promptly crash-landed on a planet that seemed to be one endless expanse of sand dunes baking under two suns. Worse, her arrival out of the anomaly seemed to have attracted the attention of some very unpleasant people, and she was now somewhere further away from home than she’d ever been and still running away from oppressive military idiots with guns. 

“This way,” said someone from beside her suddenly, causing her to start violently against the wall before she turned, raising her gun. She couldn’t see the speaker, but the sliding door to the left of her was now open.

“If you want to live, that is,” the speaker continued, emerging from the door. Dayna watched him, but he was wrapped in a brown, hooded cloak, and all she could tell so far was that he was probably human, unlike some of the other beings around here. Dayna was still blinking at the alien creatures everyone else seemed to think were normal. She supposed they must be in this system. Whereas, back in Federation space, the only real alien she’d ever known had looked much as the same as anyone else and been perhaps more human than the rest of them when you came down to it. 

Dayna heard the shouts of the soldiers and decided she could ask questions later. She dived in through the door, keeping herself flat against the wall inside, while her unknown friend faced her pursuers.

“Nobody has passed this way,” she heard him saying. “You’re looking in the wrong place.”

Weirder still, she heard one of the troopers on the comm, repeating that statement. “Nobody’s passed this way. We’re looking in the wrong place.”

Her new-found friend slipped back in through the door. It slid shut behind him, and he lowered his hood and grinned. “That should give us time to get away.”

“Should I be more worried about you than them?” said Dayna, staying against the wall, and not only because it was keeping her upright. The pain in her arm was getting worse. “What did you _do_?”

“That’s not important,” he said. “Come on. We should leave.”

“Why are you helping me?”

He stopped, his hands gripping the edges of his hood as he prepared to raise it again. He wasn’t especially threatening-looking – a man of medium height, reddish brown hair, greying at the temples, and a beard, but she kept in mind the odd effect he’d had on those soldiers. “You were being chased by storm troopers. Now, I suggest you come with me.”

“Oh?” said Dayna. She stiffened, tightening her grip on her gun. “What if I don’t want to?”

He gave a small sigh, as if she was a tiresome child. “Then we shall have to wait here for the next four or five minutes until you pass out from your injuries, and I’ll have to carry you instead. Much more awkward and far more likely to attract unwanted attention, but if you insist –” He shrugged.

“I’m not going to –” Dayna began, but the pain was increasing and she had lost quite a lot of blood before she got her arm bound up. Things were getting a bit muzzy. She wrinkled her forehead and swallowed. “Well, okay, if you put it like that, I’ll come with you. Do you have a speeder or a ship?”

He laughed as he replaced the hood. “No,” he said. “I have an eopie, but it’s quite well-behaved, I promise.”

“Do you have a name?” she said, following him back out into the alley and on out into the street at the other end, lost amongst the other townspeople and passing travellers.

He kept a steadying hand on her shoulder as they went. “Ben,” he said, which was clearly not the whole story.

Two could play at that game, though. “Dayna,” she said in return, which was when she discovered that an eopie was an animal of a kind she’d never seen before, like some sort of cross between a cow, a kangaroo and a donkey, and that he hadn’t just been being annoyingly cute about his mode of transport.

“I’m not sitting on that,” she said. She had ridden horses on Sarran, but she was pretty sure that thing was not going to be remotely like riding a horse.

Ben looked at her and then back at the eopie. “I really don’t think you’re in any state to walk,” he said. He held out a hand. “Come on.”

Dayna reviewed her options and decided it was an excellent time to pass out. She fell.

She woke in an unfamiliar space and sat up in alarm, jolting her arm and causing the pain to flare up again. She gritted her teeth, but it was still better than it had been. She was on a narrow bed in a small room, with a low-ceiling. Ben’s cloak had been cast over her and she pushed it aside now, swinging her legs around, ready to stand.

“No need to get up,” said Ben, stopping in the doorway. “We’re in the middle of nowhere and you should rest.”

Dayna hugged her arm to her, shrinking back instinctively. “I don’t know who you are. I don’t even know _where_ the hell I am.”

“We did manage introductions before you collapsed,” Ben said. “I’m Ben, you’re Dayna, you’re on Tatooine, and neither of us care for Imperial storm troopers. Are you up to eating?”

Dayna nodded. If he’d been going to kill her, he’d had plenty of opportunity already. “Thanks,” she said. 

Ben disappeared from the doorway. Dayna took one more look at the room, and then shifted her legs back onto the bed and leant back against the one rather hard pillow with a sigh and closed her eyes. She didn’t feel so great. Aside from the obvious injury to her arm, she’d bruised pretty much everything else when she’d crashed the ship here. Her head was aching, her knee hurt, and she thought she might have broken one of her ribs.

“Here,” said Ben, returning with a bowl and spoon made out of some kind of sturdy plastic. He handed it over. “Also I apologise in advance. Cooking is not my strong point.”

Dayna nodded, but on attempting to swallow the first mouthful of stew, had to fight not to spit it out again. “You’re not joking. This is terrible!”

“Yes,” he agreed. “But it is very nutritious. It’s the, ah, finer details I’m working on.”

Dayna was hungry, so she persisted, but it was bad – even worse than Tarrant’s efforts, when it had been his turn to cook and the food dispensers had broken again. “Like _taste_?” 

“I don’t usually have guests.” He watched her as she ate. “I don’t suppose you were looking for me, were you?”

Dayna forced down another spoonful of stew. Despite its faults, it helped. She felt more like herself already as she lifted her head. “I’m a complete stranger here. I don’t think this is even my galaxy, so no. Sorry.”

“I daresay it would only have meant bad news in any case,” he said, and though he sounded cheerful, his smile failed to reach his eyes; weariness falling on him.

She settled herself more comfortably on the bed, with some effort. It was narrow and hard and didn’t seem designed for comfort. She studied Ben more closely. She wasn’t sure she trusted someone who seemed out to make their life even more uncomfortable than they needed to be. Especially if he ate this stew on a regular basis. “Why _did_ you rescue me?”

“As I said, we have a common enemy.”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend?”

Ben paused as he digested that. His face cleared again, and he smiled properly. “Something like that, although in my experience that’s not always true.”

Dayna found she had worked her way through enough of the stew to be able to give up on what was left, which seemed to be mainly weird roots. She put the bowl down on her lap and risked a smile. After all, while it paid to be careful, wasn’t failure to trust as much part of the problem that had brought her here as trusting the wrong people? She looked down suddenly, a lump rising in her throat. She’d pushed all that of that out of her mind as much as she could until now for very good reasons. She tightened her shaking hand into a fist, and swallowed back her treacherous emotions.

“I do understand,” said Ben, and when she looked up and met his gaze, her instinctive anger died away. She thought he actually might. 

Dayna shook her head. “Thanks,” she said, holding the bowl out to him. “I think I’d better rest now, like you said.” She didn’t want to talk about it. She shouldn’t have run away; she should have stayed and damn well found a way to kill Servalan. That would have been the only thing left worth doing. She pressed her hands up to her eyes to wipe away useless tears. “Look, I should never have come here – I can’t stay. I have to find a way back.”

“Not for a few weeks, judging by the state of you,” he said. “And, yes, do rest. If you need anything, just shout.”

Dayna watched him leave and they lay back down, frowning over it. It wasn’t that she wanted to have been shot or captured by the soldiers earlier, but she felt almost angry that Ben had to be so _nice_ about everything. Even if his cooking maybe counted as an act of aggression.

She closed her eyes, drifting into a semi-dream of getting back, and contemplating exactly how she would kill Servalan when she found her. A really big explosion? Close up and personal with one of those ancient weapons she used to love so much? Or just shoot her with the first gun she could lay her hands on?

She felt a stab of cold doubt. _Could_ Orac even get her back? And then Dayna sat up with a curse, because she’d been so dazed when she’d staggered out of that ship, she’d forgotten one vital thing. Orac. She’d left it out there, in the wreckage of a ship that might already have been searched by those soldiers or picked over by animals or scavengers, and she wasn’t sure that even Orac deserved that. Besides, how could she get home without it? Not to mention what might happen if any Imperial soldiers got their hands on it. They seemed to be pretty much on a par with the Federation, so not the kind of people who could be trusted with an Orac.

She tried to get up too fast and winced at the sudden pain in her leg, arm and head and stopped. She almost called out for Ben, like he’d told her, but pride stopped her.

“What’s wrong?” he said, reappearing in the doorway, as if she had shouted anyway. 

Dayna sat back down heavily. “I have to get back to my ship. There’s – well, there’s something important I left in it.”

“You can’t possibly walk or even ride that far,” he said. “Even if I hired a speeder, it would hardly be advisable. I could go, if you wanted.”

Dayna looked at him. She was going to have to do the trust thing and hope she didn’t regret it later. “It’s a box. Plastic, rectangular, clear. It might not look like much, but it could be the most dangerous thing in this whole galaxy, and it’s also my way home. I’ve got the key, but it mustn’t get into the hands of the wrong people.”

“Understood,” he said, and looked almost cheerful for the first time.

Dayna looked him up and down, and frowned, wondering if he was up to it. He wasn’t even armed, as far as she could see. “It could be dangerous.”

“Not to worry. So am I,” he returned, and she remembered the way he’d misdirected those soldiers earlier. He grinned at her before he turned to leave.

“Hey,” said Dayna, “don’t you want some clue as to where my ship crashed?”

“Oh, I know precisely where it is. I’ve rarely felt such a peculiar disruption in the Force.”

She stared at him, and then screwed up her face. “You what?” Somehow she hadn’t considered that her rescuer might be crazy. She really should have done, she realised. It was exactly the kind of luck she was used to.

“I sensed its presence. It was oddly alien,” he said, his brow creasing. “Dayna,” he added, more softly, “I’m not mad. Or, at least, not in that regard. After all these months alone here, I don’t think I’ll swear to anything else.”

Dayna hesitated, still trying to make sense of what he was saying, but it wasn’t impossible, after all. She’d run into some weird things back on _Liberator_ and _Scorpio_ , and Cally had been able to sense strange stuff. “Are you an Auron or something?”

“I don’t know what an Auron is,” he said. “You said you didn’t think this was your galaxy. I believe you must be right. And if you feel alien to me, then no doubt things here will be alien to you. I can’t explain further – it’s not safe. But I am perfectly capable of fetching your box. I’ve had worse missions.”

Dayna laughed. “You only say that because you haven’t met Orac.” She had the key safely on her, though. That was good. She felt heavy with exhaustion and her arm was throbbing as she held it against her. It didn’t really matter whether Ben was crazy or not, he was all she had right now, and unlike her, he could walk upright without a lot of limping and falling over that would wind up with her dying in the desert, the sun scorching her bones. 

“Okay,” she said. “But be careful.”

“I will,” he returned.

Dayna lay down again and listened to him moving about in the outer room for a few more minutes. When he left, the whole place immediately seemed far more unbearably silent and empty, as if he’d somehow taken something important away with him. She shut her eyes, and hoped for sleep to come quickly.

She woke abruptly and painfully, jarring her arm as she struggled to escape the nightmare – waking up in the middle of a pile of dead bodies, trying to get out –

Dayna sat up and pulled her legs in against herself and concentrated on breathing. She was alone. It was dark. She put her hand to her side to reassure herself that she still had her gun safely stashed nearby.

She fell asleep again, later, but only fitfully. Ben wouldn’t be coming back yet, so she decided to get up and poke around the place in the hope of finding something edible for breakfast. She discovered he’d left some things out for her – a jug with fruit juice in that, unlike yesterday’s stew, tasted pleasant enough even if odd in its unfamiliarity. There was also something not unlike flatbread, but soft and almost elastic in the middle and hard at the edges. She would have bet any amount of credits it wasn’t supposed to be that way. She ate what she could of it, but half a piece was enough to defeat her.

She’d have to try some cooking herself, she decided. She couldn’t go on like this, and Ben shouldn’t either. It was all basically chemistry, anyway, wasn’t it? She could do better; she knew plenty about chemistry. At any rate, she was pretty sure she couldn’t do worse.

She rifled the tiny kitchen alcove for all the ingredients she could find, and then studied them, taken aback at the way she really didn’t recognise any of them. The bag over there had something almost like flour in it, but it wasn’t the right colour or texture; the fruit and vegetables looked liked the collected mutant efforts of a bunch of dedicated mad scientists, and she wasn’t even sure if the other things she’d found were for eating or cleaning or fuel or something else entirely. There were some tools and small appliances, but most of those were also a mystery. 

Dayna sat in front of her motley collection and her immediate aches and pains faded away in the light of her new problem. This level of unfamiliarity required a scientific approach. She’d have to resort to trial and error. And she’d try very hard not to blow anything up along the way. She did pause to consider whether or not Ben would be okay with this, but since he clearly needed someone to save him from his own dire cooking, she decided that even if he wasn’t, it was her moral duty. She owed him, after all.

By the time Ben returned, Dayna had been forced to go and lie down again, her injuries protesting against her day’s activities, and she was half-asleep when she heard the sound of him walking in and then _stopping_ abruptly.

 _Oh, dear_ she thought, and then with more alarm, wondered what he might do. Things had got a bit out of hand earlier, she had to admit.

“Dayna,” he said, his tone entirely even.

She sat up and looked across at him, standing in the doorway. He merely raised an eyebrow and waited for an explanation.

“Sorry about the mess,” she said. “I was sorting things out for you. And I made us dinner. I thought you might kill us both if I left it to you again.”

Ben folded his arms. “And is it dinner that’s currently decorating the ceiling, or is that something else?”

“That was attempt number one,” said Dayna. “There were, er, some difficulties.”

“I see.”

“I had to do something,” she said. “I couldn’t just _lie_ here all this time.”

Ben laughed, to her relief, and said, “So I see. I suppose there’s time for you to tidy some of it up – and clean the ceiling – when you’re feeling better. Dinner, did you say?”

Dayna nodded, and stood a little too fast, wincing again at the pain. “It’s got proper flavour and everything.”

“I should hope so,” said Ben. “I’d hate to think you turned this place upside down for nothing.”

Dayna had been worried enough about what he might say about her activities, that she’d almost forgotten to ask about his. Having finished her vegetables, she looked at him.

“Did you manage to find Orac? Someone else hasn’t taken it already?”

Ben put down his spoon and leant back in the chair. “I found it,” he said. “Unfortunately, I think you got off more lightly in the crash than it did.”

He held up a hand and rose, crossing the small room. He lifted his cloak off a small heap on the floor and carried what had been under across. It was Orac, in several pieces.

Dayna’s face fell. The sight of Orac in that state proved to be the last straw. She picked up part of its casing and couldn’t fight the tears any longer. She dropped it, clapping a hand to her mouth, and limped away, back into the bedroom, to throw herself on Ben’s bed and weep.

Ben didn’t come after her, and he didn’t ask any questions, for which Dayna was grateful. When morning eventually came, she found Orac partially reconstructed on the floor of the outer room. It wasn’t fixed enough to light up and respond when she tried the key in it.

“I thought you’d outlast everything,” she told it, and then pulled a face. She went in search of Ben, who was outside the house, sitting cross-legged in the cool of the morning, talking to himself.

Dayna shrugged and went back inside. So what if he wasn’t quite right in the head? He’d helped her out when he didn’t have to. Perhaps that was the way of the whole universe now: only someone who was at least a bit mad would try to help someone else without a reason.

Ben went out again later, although he didn’t explain to her where he was going or why. Dayna sat down on the floor and tried to fix Orac, but while it wasn’t too hard to stick pieces back together and weld wires, nothing else seemed to work. Perhaps the wretched thing did have a soul and it had lost it in the crash.

Dayna sighed, but refused to let herself cry again. Last night had been more than enough. It was just that if she couldn’t fix Orac, then she couldn’t go back, and she couldn’t kill Servalan or blow up any Federation bases. What was the point of anything?

She thought about yesterday’s experiments and about chemistry and decided she’d do some more of that today. There were important facts about this galaxy and its workings that she really had to know. It could be a matter of life and death.

Dayna ducked down behind a rocky outcrop and waited hopefully. Starting from scratch again was a weird feeling, but she was pretty sure of she’d got the balance right this time – and, yes, there it was –

_BOOM._

She sagged back against the rocks and smiled in satisfaction, and then found she had to wipe away more unwanted tears.

“What the blazes are you _doing_?” demanded Ben suddenly from beside her, crouching down, one hand on the nearest rock. Then he closed his eyes briefly and held up a hand. “No. It can wait.”

He rose, his cloak billowing out in the breeze and as Dayna followed him, she saw the burning boxes and other bits of junk she’d successfully scattered in flaming pieces about the dunes suddenly swallowed and extinguished by an impossible wave of sand.

“In case you’d forgotten,” said Ben, turning back to her, “some very unfriendly people were looking for you. I’m inclined to believe it was only a passing interest, but you can’t take chances. I’m not keen to draw attention to myself, either.”

Dayna stared out over the endless expanse of sand and rocks. “I don’t think there’s anyone out there _to_ notice.”

“Let us hope there isn’t,” said Ben, drawing himself up. He followed her gaze, and his annoyance faded. “No, I don’t sense anything.”

She couldn’t feel as sorry as she ought to. She’d never needed to blow something up quite as much as this before. It wasn’t as if she had anyone to kill out here, or not anyone who’d deserve it, and she had to do _something_.

“New house rule,” said Ben, walking past her, leading the way back. “No explosions inside under any circumstances and only very minor ones anywhere in the vicinity, or you and I must part company.”

Dayna followed. “All right. I didn’t think. I just –” She sighed again, and shrugged.

“You can’t just lie there,” he said. “I remember. I’ll find something useful for you to do. Clearly you can’t be trusted to entertain yourself.”

He slowed so that she could fall into step beside him, despite her limp.

“I should never have left,” Dayna said at last. “There were things I should have done instead.” Her expression darkened. “People I should have killed.” She remembered having had her gun to Servalan’s head once and wondered if things would have been different if she’d pulled the trigger.

Ben looked across at her, a shadow of concern passing over his face, but he refrained from lecturing her about revenge. She’d thought for a moment he might. “I am sorry,” was all he said. 

“So am I.”

“I sense great pain in you,” he added as they reached the house.

Dayna leant against the wall, more tired than she liked to admit by her experiments. “Um. Thanks. Yeah, my arm does hurt quite a bit. My leg, too. And my ribs.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” he said, “although I could almost wish your injuries had been a little more severe.” He lowered his hood as he entered the room. “That was not what I meant. You’ve suffered a great loss, I think.”

She sank down onto the floor and wouldn’t look at him. “It was all such a mess.” She wiped her eyes impatiently. “All for nothing.” Then she raised her head, swallowing back the grief. “What about you? Something bad happened to you, too, didn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Well, what’s your excuse, then?” she said. “If the Empire’s hurt people you cared about, then why are you just sitting here? It’s not as if you’re stuck a hundred thousand light years away because of a stupid computer, is it? Why don’t you _do_ something? You’ve got some kind of magic power. I saw what you did with the sand.”

Ben didn’t give her the reaction she’d been trying to provoke. He only said, “I have work to do here.”

“Like what?”

“A secret,” said Ben. “Why don’t you go and lie down? I’ll see if I can find us anything to eat in the chaos you’ve made of my house.”

Dayna lifted her head sharply, forgetting everything else in the face of the immediate threat of yet more appalling food. “No!” she said. “Or at least, you can find us something to eat, but you’d better let me tell you what to do with it.”

“My cooking isn’t _that_ bad,” he said.

“Yes, it is,” said Dayna, and she lost enough of her anger almost to feel sorry for him. “You’ve just got used to it. Which isn’t a good thing, you know.”

Ben sat down opposite her. “You may be right. Dayna –”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“No,” he agreed. “I don’t, either. But if you should want to later, I’ll listen.”

“All I want is to kill Servalan.” She set her face and waited again for him to say something about the evils of revenge, because he seemed exactly the kind of person who would, but he only bit back a minute sigh and stood again.

“Now,” he said, and smiled at her, “you had strong opinions on the matter of our next meal, I believe?”

Dayna pushed everything else to the back of her mind, and found she could smile in return. “I do. Pay attention, Mystery Hermit. You’re going to be grateful you met me.”

“Provided you don’t blow us both up, of course.”

“I’m a weapons expert. I know what I’m doing when it comes to explosions. Much more than I do about cooking, which tells you exactly how bad yours is.”

Dayna woke again in the middle of the night, sitting upright too fast and jolting broken bones, sprains and bruises too hard. “Ow,” she said under her breath, and then put her good hand to her head. It was always the same – shooting, and then waking up in a pile of bodies, assumed dead like the rest, except –

Except she wasn’t. That was a good thing, but it didn’t always feel like it.

Dayna threw off the blanket and crept out of the room, only to see through the open main door that Ben was up anyway, sitting outside cross-legged in the same way that Cally had sometimes when she was meditating. He wasn’t talking to himself this time, which was probably reassuring. She had begun to accept that it was difficult to tell with Ben. He wasn’t wrong about the alien thing.

She hunted round for a lamp, and then sat down, planning out a new weapon, pausing to fetch odd bits and pieces from around the house.

“What are you doing?” Ben asked, standing over her, evidently having finished his meditation.

Dayna looked up. “Trying to make myself a new gun. I had some thoughts, but I don’t have what I need for casing.” She collected up the metal pieces. “I think I’ll start small – make myself a new bow and some arrows in the morning. Or is that against house rules as well?”

“As long as you’re not using any of them indoors or on any passing Jawas, no,” said Ben. “It would be rather hypocritical of me.”

“You make weapons, too?” said Dayna, trying awkwardly to rise.

Ben gave her his hand and pulled her up. “No. I have made _one_ , though. Come on, you really must try to get some more rest if you want to heal properly.”

“I can’t sleep.”

“As I said, if you want to talk…”

Dayna shook her head.

“I could probably help,” he offered. “With the not sleeping, I mean.”

Dayna turned in the doorway. “What, not more magic?”

He laughed. “Yes, more magic. Of a sort.”

“Okay, then,” said Dayna, interested. “You can try.”

She thought, afterwards, that she should have been more careful, but it was growing easy to trust Ben, and every time she risked it, he did nothing to make her regret that choice. But it did help: when she lay back down, tugging the thin blanket around her, he crossed over, and leant down to put a hand to her cheek, and it was easier suddenly to let go, to relax and drift away back into sleep. She still woke again suddenly, hours later, in the light, her heart thudding too fast and sweating, but it did help.

She went out in search of wood. Tatooine wasn’t the sort of place where much grew, but there were some thin and twisted trees in the rocky area around Ben’s house. She made a bow out of one of the branches, carving it out with a fancy knife that Ben called a vibroblade and claimed he didn’t even know he’d had. She strengthened it with thin strips of a pliable tin-like alloy and made the arrows out of metal strips from the broken old moisture vat rusting out in the yard. 

What she could do with, she thought, was something to embed in the end of the metal tube to act as a tracker. Finding the arrows again after, or even what she’d hit would be difficult on Tatooine. Trying to work something out stumped her, to her frustration. Everything was so unfamiliar here she wasn’t sure what to use, and Ben had disappeared off somewhere again. She’d have to ask him when she got back. 

“You made these?” said Ben, turning one of her arrows over in his fingers. “Very clever.”

Dayna sat down at the table with him. “It’s what I _do_.”

“It is, isn’t it?” he said, a small frown creasing his forehead.

Dayna rolled her eyes and snatched the arrow back. “You don’t need to lecture. I’ve heard it all before.”

“It’s not that,” he said. “I’m just thinking about where you should go once you’re healed. You certainly aren’t made for moisture farming or bantha breeding.”

Dayna glanced to one side, at the remains of Orac. “Sorry. I keep trying with Orac, to see if I can get myself right out of here, but I’m not a computer expert.” She swallowed. “I mean-” She forced all thoughts of Avon out of her head and straightened herself, changing the subject. “I wanted to test these out, but I’m not well enough yet. Maybe in a few days.”

“I could test them for you,” Ben offered, a small smile playing on his lips. “How would that be?”

Dayna laughed. “Thanks, but I think you wouldn’t miss anything anyway, even if I’d made a mess of them. That’s no use to me, not when I need to know where I’ve gone wrong.”

“Oh. Well, thank you. I think.”

Dayna tilted her head to one side, watching the way he tried to pretend not to be disappointed at being deprived of the excuse, and smiled more widely. Her cheeks ached with the unaccustomed movement. “You could test them anyway. If you wanted. It probably would be better than nothing.”

He did.

The next night when she woke from the nightmare again, she stumbled out of her room, searching for her bow. She could make a few adjustments, smooth down the wood a little further; it’d make her feel better.

“Hello there,” said Ben out of the darkness, making her jump. “Sorry,” he added, moving near enough to be seen. “I was trying _not_ to startle you.”

She sighed. “Sorry if I woke you.”

“Not to worry. It makes a change to be disturbed by someone else’s nightmares.”

Dayna bit her lip. “Do _you_ want to talk about it?”

“No,” he said, and then hesitated, and said, “Dayna, would you like to see the weapon I once constructed?”

Dayna did.

Ben seemed a bit wary of letting her hold what he called his lightsaber, but Dayna would never be careless with a weapon like this. She hadn’t seen anything like it before. She extinguished the blue energy blade and turned the handle over in her long fingers, then held it up to her ear.

Ben gave a bemused smile, watching her closely.

“I can hear something sort of _humming_ ,” she said. “It’s beautiful. I’d _love_ one.” She re-ignited the blade and studied it with awe. She recognised a masterpiece when she saw one. And a person could do some serious damage with this thing, even if it wouldn’t be much good at long range.

Ben still looked as if he was regretting his impulse. “You can’t, I’m afraid, for quite a few reasons. It’s not merely a weapon. It, well, it means a great deal more than that.”

“Don’t worry,” said Dayna. She passed it back to him with care. “I didn’t break anything. Promise.” She looked at the relief on his face and had to giggle, because if she were with anyone else there were jokes she could make about handling someone’s weapon, but she couldn’t make out whether or not Ben would laugh or be shocked or just not get it. “The energy source inside it – what is it?”

Ben placed the inert lightsaber back on his belt. “Dayna. You must never even mention that you saw it.”

“No,” said Dayna, “I’m asking because –” She took another look at his face, and stopped. Instead she shrugged and said, “Never mind. I expect I can go back to sleep now.”

But, she thought, when she’d said to him that whatever was inside it was humming, it wasn’t quite true. It had sounded more like singing, and she wished he’d let her take a look at the inner workings. She fell asleep still wondering about it, and beginning to think that if she stayed here much longer, she’d start believing in magic properly, not just as a joke.

Days passed, mostly in similar patterns, except Ben never let her near the lightsaber again, although he did, on his occasional trips to various towns or villages, bring her what she needed to construct a new gun. Both of them were beginning to improve their cooking abilities, which Dayna felt countered as a major accomplishment.

She still woke from the same nightmares most nights, though, and when she did, Ben was always around. She was never sure if she’d woken him or if he was awake anyway or meditating. Whatever the reason, he didn’t seem to get much sleep, either.

On this particular day, in the early hours of the morning, as the suns began to rise, the grey before dawn creeping towards daylight, Ben said, as usual, “If you want to talk about it –”

Dayna lifted her head and, somewhat to her own surprise, said, “Yes.” She’d have to go soon and suddenly, she wanted Ben to know. She wanted someone in this alien place who wasn’t her to remember. It seemed far worse to think that if something happened to her, nobody else would. 

Ben made her a drink, and she told him about a corrupt and oppressive Federation that ruled a galaxy somewhere far, far away from here, and about the people who tried to fight, despite all the odds, mostly just because somebody had to do it.

Even here, where the names meant nothing, she couldn’t give him those. She’d left them behind, along with her own, the same way she suspected Ben must have done. But she could explain about _Liberator_ and what it meant; she could talk about Blake, who she’d never really met properly, and how terrible Servalan was and how much she wished she’d killed her.

“You know,” said Ben eventually, “I’d been wondering about something, but you’ve made up my mind.” He reached into his robes and pulled out a metal disc. “Take this file. Go to the co-ordinates I’ve marked on it, and it’ll serve as an introduction to people who will make good use of you. I should imagine they’ll be very happy to let you be your, ah, explosive self.”

Dayna tightened her fingers around it. Rebellion against the Imperial forces here, she guessed. She looked up again. “But if you – if you know people like that, why aren’t you with them?”

“I have work to do here,” said Ben. “We all have our own paths to walk, and mine lies on Tatooine for now. Besides, too much fighting was part of the problem for – for me. I might, if I continued, only give the galaxy another horror to contend with.”

Dayna laughed, and then caught his expression and the serious light in his eyes. She didn’t really understand him, because as long as she _could_ fight, she would, and whatever he was doing wasn’t something she recognised as fighting. He was like her father in some ways, only instead of being a brilliant designer of weapons who hated to use them, he was more like a weapon refusing to be used. A sword very firmly set in a stone, and she wasn’t the person who could pull it out.

Dayna said, “I might try to leave, though. Even without Orac, it might be possible to get back.”

“Of course,” said Ben. “That is your decision to make. But if you do stay, be careful, Dayna. Don’t fight only out of anger and pain. The Emperor is a master of such emotions and thrives on them. I hope you’ll never encounter him, but you are alien enough that you could become a curiosity to him. That isn’t a pleasant thought.”

Dayna stretched over and patted his hand. “Don’t worry. Whatever I decide, I do have some things to live for. There are weapons I haven’t built yet and things I haven’t blown up – and unfriendly people either here or there who are going to live to be _very_ sorry I survived.”

“Good,” he said, and a smile lit his face. “By the way, I trust it goes without saying that you mustn’t mention me to anyone, not even in the rebellion. Especially not once you understand who – what – I am, as I’m sure you will once you travel about the galaxy.”

“A mad old hermit who can’t cook but can do magic?” said Dayna, holding his gaze and then poking her tongue out at him. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone any of that. They’d never believe me anyway.”

“I’m not old, thank you,” he said. “And my cooking has improved considerably –”

“You cremated dinner yesterday.”

Ben drew back. “If someone had bothered to mention they’d been meddling with the fuel controls in the stove, that would not have happened.”

“It was broken,” said Dayna. “I, er, mended it.”

“So I noticed.”

Despite the slowness of life on Tatooine – a pace that was not her style at all – Dayna felt a small pang to think there wouldn’t be many more nights like this between them, but Ben was right; it was time for her to leave. 

“You’ll be okay here alone, won’t you?” she said.

Ben smiled. “I shall miss you, if that’s what you mean, but I think I will considerably safer once you’ve gone.”

“Probably,” she agreed and laughed. She was a pretty lethal weapon herself, it was true.

Other people, regardless of which galaxy, were going to find that out for themselves very soon. Dayna grinned.


End file.
